Censorship of Pictures in the Calendar (Haaretz – 2000)

Aviv Lavie describes, in his ‘Salt of the Earth’ column (10.11), the ‘censored’ calendar of the Division for Residential Education, which aroused in him, as well as in some senior officials of the Ministry of Education, resentment and discomfort. There were pages depicting sunbathers on the beach in ‘scant clothing,’ which were covered up, cut out, or defaced.

It is interesting to consider what would have happened had this calendar included Tatiana Suskin’s pig poster (for distributing which in Hebron she was tried and imprisoned), which would have offended Muslim sensibilities. Would these same people then have demanded freedom of expression, and feared that we might go on to ‘cut up books as well’? We have already grown accustomed to artists’ freedom of expression and their total disregard for all limits (sometimes financed by all our tax money). Does the Residential Education Administration also have artistic pretensions?

I would have expected Aviv Lavie to protest precisely the intention to distribute such a calendar to institutions, some of which are yeshiva schools.

Beyond all this, it seems a bit strange to me that the indignation is being voiced by an institution that calls itself a ‘democratic boarding school.’ In the finest democratic tradition, they are apparently sensitive and attentive to the full range of voices and opinions, provided that these are seen and heard exactly as they themselves prefer.